The Train to Murree

The Stocks weren’t kidding when they laughingly told me that the 24 hour train ride from Mirpurkhas on the southern boarder to Murree where the missionary school is nestled in the foothills of the Himalaya mountains would take my initiation into the Pakistani lifestyle to a whole new level. I spent Saturday morning playing with my new hostel children friends and sitting in on a Urdu Bible lesson. At 1:30 Paul bustled in calling, “We have only 2 and a half hours to get ready!” We needed to pack for our week at Ashley’s boarding school in Murree. Paul wanted very much for us all to be on the road to Hyderabad, the city with the train station, by 4:00 so that we could stop to visit a man in the hospital. Unfortunately, the rushing around accumulating sheets, clothes, books, games, and food took until 5:00 and we had just time to be driven two hours to catch our 7:30 train.

As the car took us to Hyderabad, the desert scenery rolling and bouncing by, I tried to doze. I awoke as we were pulling into the city. I stared as Paul pointed out the towering remains of a brick fort build in the age of the Mogal Empire. It was already beginning to get dark by the time we unloaded at the station. Old porters with dark, weathered skin and white hair wrapped cloth around their foreheads and stacked our large, clumsy suitcases two high on top of their heads. I wasn’t feeling well at the time waiting on the station and the time went by in a blur of beggars, chattering passers by, and rushing trains.

Right on time, our train pulled up and I was waved aboard and into a compartment along with the four Stocks, our ten pieces of luggage, and one unfortunate single man who seemed decidedly unimpressed by the noisy bustle of our overwhelming party. The compartment consisted of two six foot long benches facing each other across as two foot wide isle. Two cushioned platforms upon which one could recline formed a roof six feet above the benches. It turned out that the cushions on the walls folded down to create a middle layer of bed space. In this way, the compartment could easily accommodate six passengers sleeping on their own cots in three layers. Between the two bottom benches, a one foot by one foot table stuck out from the far wall underneath a window out into the countryside.

One accommodation that wasn’t quite as delightful, though it didn’t bother the seasoned Stock family, were the toilets. They were located on the ends of the rocking rail cars and came in two varieties. The eastern style toilets are holes in the ground situated between two places to put your feet, ridged for better traction while squatting. Next to the hole is a pipe from which water can be drawn; this water is used instead of paper. Is this too graphic? If it isn’t too graphic to be experienced on an average day in Pakistan, it is not too graphic to be shared. The alternative to the eastern toilets were western style toilets. Surprisingly, the Stocks said that these western toilets are actually less sanitary than the eastern ones. Apparently, some Pakistanis don’t know how the western toilets are meant to be used and sometimes clime on top of the plastic seat to squat in their familiar way.

Once we got settled in, the Stocks nestled down to enjoy the 24 hour vacation. Books, cards, i-pods, and movies appeared from the bursting backpacks. The Stocks also enjoyed buying chai, juice and other snacks from the porters that walked the halls of the train calling out their wares. I felt a little sorry for the one Pakistani passenger who glanced at us disparagingly and sat outside the compartment until retiring to one of the top bunks around 9:00. The rest of us, on the other hand, watched Julie and Julia, before collapsing in bed at 1:30am.

At around 10:00am the following morning, I woke up. Most of the day was spent in relaxation, enjoying games of cards and movies (Push and Extraordinary Measures.) Exhausted and with increasing discomfort in my mouth from extensive cold sores which made it hard to speak, eat, or smile, I spent a fair amount of the time napping and reading from my novel, Duncton Wood.

I awoke from one of my naps to find that the train had stopped and that Paul Stock was anxiously holding out, for his wife’s inspection, his suspiciously empty ipod pouch. After a scrambled searched of our bags, we determined that the item was no longer among our things. The loss of the device was made all the worse by the fact that the ipod contained the only copy of many of Paul’s mother personal stories. I prayed silently that God would return to us the presumably stolen piece of property. The Stocks never gave up. After not too much time, suspicion turned on the placid Pakistani sitting by. After a search of his bag, one of Paul’s ipod wires was found. Paul demanded that the man return to him the ipod or Paul would call the police. Submissively, the man led Paul to the notorious bathroom and produced the ipod from above the light fixture. The man thanked Paul for not calling the police and offered to spend the rest of the trip outside the compartment, an offer Paul grimly accepted.

During the excitement of the missing ipod, I hadn’t noticed that the train had never commenced its journey. It turned out that our train needed a new engine. With the pleasant Pakistani disregard for lateness or lost time, we waited and waited, the Stocks cheerfully enjoying the extra time to relax with each other. Eventually another engine was brought to our train and we felt ourselves begin again to move. This engine, however, was not nearly as strong and the train rumbled along at a fraction of the previous speed. By the time we arrived in Rawalpini at 2:30am, the train was seven hours later than planned but not much later than expected. In a daze, I tagged along, clinging to my luggage, as the Stocks led the way off the platform and to a taxi to finish the last two hours of our trip from the city to the school. We arrived as the sun was rising over the Himalayas. I barely remember dragging our things up the steep path to the “Stock House” inside of which I collapsed on a bed and finally slept. I am now sitting on the same bed, twenty four hours later and must bid you again, goodnight!